Just came back from several hours of range testing. I'll have photos later tomorrow. The Reader's Digest Condensed Version is as follows:
1. I was able to borrow a Optima 7 channel from Ron at Shalimar Hobbies so I tested the Optima 9 with the two stock antennas, one stock antenna, a spike antenna made from a wifi antenna coax and no antenna at all as well as the Optima 7.
2. My test site ended up slightly shorter than last time due to some road work going on, about 2.2 miles to the peak of the bridge rather than the 2.4 miles I had last time. I lost line of sight on the back side of the bridge, but the better receivers would re-link in the turn around area at about 2.6-2.8+ miles. I also had to set up a rig tht mounted on my wife's sunroof on her car because I only had two people, rather than the three I had before. It seems like this time I had a little less range on my reference receiver and I attribute that to the lack of someone holding the transmitter. Can't prove it, but that is what I think. See this link for background on the site:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showt...parative+range
2. The Hitec system worked as well as any I have tested and better than most. It performed better than the Futaba FASST, the Airtronics, the XPS and the JR low end receivers. It performed at least as good as my reference receiver, the JR AR7000. I tested a JR AR7000 along with the Hitec and it had about as much range as the last time, possibly a little less. Maybe the environment or transmitter set-up affected it also.
3. The two antennas worked a little better than one on the Optima 9, but this was at somewhere over 2.2 miles away and it worked better with odd orientations (as you would expect). It did seem to have a few quick dropouts on one antenna that the Optima 7 did not have. It linked back up on the other side of the bridge like the JR receivers did, whereas the Futaba, Airtronics and XPS did not back when I tested them. I actually got a link at almost 3 miles, but because of the clutter, I could not tell if the loss of link was range or line of sight related.
4. The Optima 7 worked as good as the 9 given the same orientation. Both had at least 2.2 miles of range.
5. The Optima 9 with a single spike antenna (cut to the same length as a JR coax antenna wire part) got at around 2.2 miles at the best orientation.
6. The no-antenna range on the Optima 9 was about 330 feet.
7. Remember that I intentionally set this up as a best case situation. I can't say anything about what any of the receivers would do in particular airplanes, especially ones with big masses of metal, or at odd orientations, I just tested just brute force range.
8. A final observation is that any of the "name brand" receivers I have tested so far has *WAY* more range than any sane person would fly an R/C model out to. What would happen with worst case orientation, I can't say......
later,
Mel Duval